Remembering Edward Teller

In connection with the death of Edward Teller yesterday, National Review Online has posted John Miller’s September 2002 article based on Miller’s interview with Teller: “Truth Teller.”
Here’s the “Author’s Note” with which Miller prefaces the article: “Edward Teller once offered this good piece of advice: ‘Live your life in such a way that when death comes, you are ready to die.’
“The 95-year-old Teller was ready when death finally came to him yesterday afternoon at 3:30. What a remarkable life it was: Born in Budapest, he fled the rise of Nazism and became one of the most important scientists and great anti-Communists of the 20th century. He worked on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War and invented the H-bomb several years later. In 1967, he introduced Ronald Reagan to the concept of missile defense and in the 1980s he championed the Strategic Defense Initiative. Left-wingers never lacked reasons for despising him, but at the top of their list was Teller’s testimony against granting a security clearance to Robert Oppenheimer in 1954. (Oppenheimer had lied to federal investigators about his extensive contacts with known Communists and recent revelations show that he was a member of the Communist Party until at least 1942.)
“On July 23, President Bush awarded Teller a much-deserved Medal of Freedom. A little more than a year ago, Teller granted one of his final interviews to me, and I wrote about the great man’s legacy in the September 30, 2002 issue of National Review.”